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| Fifth Column | |
| Insane review blasted | |
| 2004-02-02 | |
| EFL. The New York Times assigning a left-wing history professor to review a left-wing history book is de rigeur. That the reviewer’s last published book, a monograph on the fall of the Soviet Union, was "clever," according to David Pryce-Jones, but written by a Soviet "apologist" is, again, status quo. When the book in review claims that Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea is an overstated evil (and that all Kim needs is a little tenderness and understanding) and that, on balance, President George Bush is "more evil" than the "Dear Leader" of North Korean, we shrug our shoulders; a typical of the tenured radical, pandering to 68’er constituents. And, after years of conditioning, we at the Politburo are not surprised when the Times positively reviews such a book. It is logical that the NYT will be illogical. Stephen Kotkin’s review of Bruce Cumings’ North Korea: Another Country, an examination of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula, finds a book brimming with historical revisionism and moral equivalence, a book, we think, unworthy of praise, however faint, from America’s top-selling "serious" broadsheet. (The Economist, the only other major publication to review Another Country, panned the book, chiding Cumings for "pick[ing] his facts to fit his prejudices") All the brains of a keanulint. Kotkin quotes the author as urging the United States to butt out of Kim’s affairs, for, after all, "it is their country." Penetrating analysis, for sure. But most readers will surely understand that "their" refers to Kim Jong-Il and his leisure-suited yes-men, not the enslaved people of North Korea. Regardless, the problems plaguing the "Democractic" People’s Republic are the fault of, from the very beginning, evil Uncle Sam. Cumings, Kotkin says, is clear on this point: "The United States contributed mightily to the [current] North Korean predicament." And he isn’t talking about America’s financial contributions to the North, the bags of cash meant to bribe Kim into nuclear compliance, and the donations meant to alleviate the effects of a man-made famine. Kotkin had to go to a music store to replace a busted harp string. As did Cumings. "[Cumings] suggests that it was not Kim Il Sung or Stalin who incited hostilities but Dean Acheson and Harry S. Truman." This bit of selective history is important to Cumings case (he has written a previous book on the subject). But Kotkin is engaged in a recitation of Cumings’ theses, not a critical review of their cogency. The historians skeptical eye is not on display. Instead, these themes--that the Korean War was a legitimate "anti-imperialist" struggle that, thus, legitimizes Kim’s current enthusiasm for Stalinist dictatorship--are not disputed or discussed at length by the reviewer. Cumings’ lips fell off. Cumings can barely conceal his enthusiasm for Korean communism. He is quoted by Kotkin as recommending Pyongyang as a holiday destination with therapeutic powers: "On my infrequent visits to the country I have been happy...empathy for the underdog is something I can’t help, being a life-long fan of the Cleveland Indians." A real cut-up, this Cumings. Besides reading like the delusional dispatch from a modern-day Walter Duranty, we think there is something crass in comparing a mediocre baseball team to a totalitarian government guilty of genocide against its citizens. (A question for Cumings: if you are a sucker for the underdog, then why not root for the hundreds of thousands of innocents languishing in Kim’s concentration camps?) Hey Cumings? You think starvation under communism is better than prosperity under capitalism? Asshole. All that personalty-cult business, absurd "Juche" philosophy and lack of freedom forces Cumings to concede that "politically [North Korea] is not a nice place, but it is an understandable place... [it’s] an anticolonial and anti-imperial state growing out of a half century of Japanese colonial rule and another half century of continuous confrontation with a hegemonic United States and a more powerful South Korea." That Korea is "not a nice place" is surely the understatement of the year. That the lack freedom and rights afforded to North Korean citizens is "understandable" leads us to believe that Cumings might be in the pay of Kim’s propaganda machine and is so preposterous that it doesn’t merit a serious response. If that’s anticolonialism then give me colonial states.
Cumings’ political philosophy: Freedom bad, tyranny good. Read, freedom is slavery. This is a truly appalling sentiment; and one that is presented without controversy by Kotkin. What "new" information is Cumings privy to that would challenge existing estimates of detainees? (He might want to consult "The Hidden Gulag," a 125 page report compiled by the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, complete with satellite photographs of the camp complexes and spine-tingling testimony from camp survivors). Regardless of numbers, Cumings claims that the gulag at least it’s survivable and they generously arrest the whole family, presumably to alleviate the boredom of the accused. (Would Cumings also--given the experiences of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi--label the Nazi KZ komplex "survivable"?) Probably. In comparison to the "shrewd" Kim Jong-Il, Bush is "the greater evil," says Cumings. Again, the reviewer registers no disagreement, treating the comparison as judicious and entirely reasonable. Cumings’brand of "scholarship" is of the Robert Thuston, David Irving variety--we love the ideology, so we support the ideologues. But because the dominant view is contra Bush--the reviewer occasionally writes for the American Prospect, for example--this apologia for mass murder and fifty years of state Stalinism is treated with seriousness. Well, evil IS serious. | |
| Posted by:Steve from Relto |
| #4 ...Having grown up almost within earshot of Lakefront Stadium, I can assure this idiot that the Indians and their fans don't need his support. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-2-2 1:47:36 PM |
| #3 As an amoral athiest its hard to know where to start. If evil exists anywhere in this world it exists in N Korea. Would I put a bullet in Kimmies head? Yes I would! Would I beat him to death with a baseball bat? Yes I would? And I would steel myself to the task by thinking of the many many thousands of dead and destroyed people he is responsible for. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-2-2 11:14:23 AM |
| #2 "...something I can’t help, being a life-long fan of the Cleveland Indians." As a fellow lifelong Indians fan, I can only say that Cummings is the proverbial turd in our punch bowl. Cummings is the the Wahoo Club, what Adolf Hitler is to the American Kennel Club. The NYT must be bucking for another Pulitzer. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-2-2 11:02:08 AM |
| #1 Please make that Insane Book Blasted. |
| Posted by: Steve from Relto 2004-2-2 10:52:01 AM |